


#eggfacts

by labocat



Category: Pokemon GO
Genre: Gen, Graduate School, Worldbuilding, everyone else is grad or undergrad students, pokemon research academia is a cutthroat world, the team leaders are postdocs, willow is the PI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-08 07:04:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8834986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labocat/pseuds/labocat
Summary: Grad school wasn't supposed to be easy, but you certainly didn't think you'd find yourself staging a coup in the middle of the night and dodging ghost Pokemon along the way.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NYCScribbler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NYCScribbler/gifts).



> A Very Happy Yuletide to you! I was excited to have the amount of freedom your letter gave me, and I hope you enjoy the result!

  
The size and pattern on a Bulbasaur’s egg can tell you what sort of bloom it will have as an Ivysaur #eggfacts

“Spark! You better not be leaking our research on your stupid Twitter feed again!”

“Never, Candela! You know me, the soul of discretion!” You get a wink from your team leader, even as your phone pings with another update on the eggfacts hashtag. It had been a requirement for joining the team, he’d said. Of course you’d want to stay updated on the research you were helping contribute to, he’d said. You’d been so excited you hadn’t even questioned it. Now your phone is blown up with more updates on the various hashtags that Spark had started, based on the check-ins you and the other grad students had with him.

The smile you get from Spark when he hands you back the Ivysaur you’d raised and given him for inspection is warm, though. Your Ivysaur, Bloom, nuzzles your hand as you lift him back down to the floor, taking a moment to stroke the leaves of the hydrangea spray on his back. Bloom’s egg had been a spectacularly speckled blue and purple affair, and Spark had tasked you with documenting and reporting back regularly as Bloom had hatched and grown from a Bulbasaur to an Ivysaur. He always seemed particularly interested in your eggs and trying to guess what sort of Pokemon they would hatch, so you had become a fairly regular fixture in his office. Even Blanche, who seemed to share at least a similar interest in research, would come in from time to time. She seemed to be more interested in the pure numbers, though, and her comments about how an interesting pattern appeared on a shell or the size or warmth that could be felt through the shell never gave you the warm pride that any of Spark’s comments did. His enthusiasm was always hard to avoid getting caught up in, which you blame entirely for the bag full of candies and overflowing with Pokeballs you always seem to need on-hand.

On your way out of the office, you bump fists with another one of Spark’s grad students - a new recruit, from the way she keeps darting her eyes about the office, marvelling in how many Pokemon seem to be roaming about the small room and interacting with one another. The Pikachu in her arms seems content, though, and you give her a nod. Spark’s always had a particular preference for electric-type, and you know she’ll go far.

Candela steps out of her office just as you pass it, giving Bloom a once over and giving you a nod.

“Your Ivysaur’s coming along nicely. Any time you want to help me out with my research, just let me know; Spark’s good with eggs, but once they’re past their second evolution, you really need someone who can draw out their power and potential.”

You thank her, but assure her that you’re really just in this for the fun of it. Candela’s grad students are always storming some gym or other, organizing late-night raids when they think gyms will be easiest to take, after all the undergrads have gone to bed. You’d much rather just run and cycle with your Pokemon, exploring the fields around campus and the abandoned subway system just on the outskirts of town, finding what Pokemon you can there. A flock of Zubat had just moved into one of the side tunnels the other week, making it all but impossible to navigate. You’d caught a particularly nice one last Tuesday, though that you’d hung onto, and with all of the candy Professor Willow gave you, you’re pretty sure you’ll be able to evolve her into a giant Golbat soon.

You smile as you think of Professor Willow and all of the projects he’s currently working on. Every time a new cabal of Pidgey or Rattata move in, you can hear him scrambling to come up with some new hypothesis on what to do with the waves of them you know the grad students and undergrads will bring in. Spark, Candela, and Blanche all have their specific projects as post-docs, but Professor Willow always seems to be chasing some new theory or other and never turns down a request to check out what must surely be the millionth Pidgey he’s seen and never fails to have a stash of candy ready as a reward. Even if you know he just tags and releases them, you know from your own Pokemon that to get that many Pokemon to give you candies and feel that friendly towards you is no small feat. He’s working on what promises to be the premiere paper on Pidgey migration in your area, and it gives you a swell of pride to know that at least a sentence or two will be influenced by the Pidgeys you’d collected.

“Oh good, you haven’t left yet!” Spark’s voice makes you turn around, although you sort of wish you hadn’t when you see the devious grin spreading across his face. The new recruit is by his side, her shy look gone in favor of echoing his.

“We heard that Candela’s kids are taking the night off tonight - they’re getting complacent since Blanche has had her kids working harder than usual on her evolution research. They’ve been tired and apparently haven’t been putting up much of a fight to keep or take gyms from the Valor kids lately.” You nod; while Blanche herself doesn’t seem to put much stock in the gym fights or who holds a certain gym, her students have started what almost seems like a blood feud with Candela’s. Candela encouraged it, and while Blanche didn’t discourage it, her approval of the speed of her student’s Pokemon’s evolutions seemed to have been taken as approval and they’d thrown themselves into the feud whole-heartedly. You’d always avoided it; Spark’s research involved eggs and characteristics of Pokemon throughout their stages and evolutions, so it was never that important to you to fight. Candy and exploring and getting your Pokemon to like you seemed to do the job well enough.

“So, you in?” The new girl holds her Pikachu on her hip with one arm while holding her other hand out to you. All three of them - Spark, the girl, and her Pikachu - seem to be electrified, and you inwardly sigh as you wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into as you say sure.

“Great! We’ll meet at 11 under the clocktower. Wear black, but with a yellow band somewhere so they know it’s us! And don’t tell Candela!”

“Don’t tell Candela what?” It’s practically magic, how seamlessly Spark’s face jumps from conniving to innocent as he spins to face Candela, who has walked back in and looks just as complacent as Spark has said she felt.

“Oh, nothing, just a new hunch I have about the thickness of an egg and the resulting attack power jumps at each evolution. But I won’t tell you, even if you ask!” Candela’s eyes light up as she starts waving the mug of coffee she’d gone to grab, starting to badger Spark about what he’s found. They move back into her office, leaving you and the new girl alone.

“Have you ever done one of these before?” She seems excited, all but bouncing on her toes, and you fondly remember your first year of graduate school, before you became jaded and tired and just wanted to be done.

You tell her that it’s been a while, that you hadn’t taken a gym in what had to have been months, at which point her eyes go wide with disbelief. “You mean you’ve just let Valor and Mystic rule the campus? Where’s your Instinct pride?”

Vanished, along with all the hours of sleep you thought you’d regain when you stopped being an irresponsible undergraduate and tried to be an adult graduate student. Vanished after the first year, when it became clear that while research was fun and all, there were just not enough hours in the day to keep up with Spark’s boundless enthusiasm or the fact that Professor Willow never seemed to sleep. Seriously, he answered emails and returned Poke candies with a speed and consistency that was downright eerie.

So it’d been a while since you’d tried to take a gym; it was a pursuit better suited to Valor and Mystic’s research anyway, with their focus on strength and battle skills. It was part of the reason you’d chosen Instinct in the first place.

She looks astonished, and a firm set comes into her mouth that you recognize from Spark’s own library of expressions, the one he wears when you tell him that you’re not sure a hundredth Magikarp egg will make a difference in your research. She’s made a better choice than she knows, you think, even as you resign yourself to spending tonight not sleeping.

That’s how you find yourself under the clocktower at 10:45 with a gaggle of other Instinct grad students and an even larger army of Instinct undergraduates. Word had somehow spread faster than a Rapidash in summer, and the turnout frankly surprises you. You weren’t even sure there had been this many undergrads in Instinct, but they’re all ready and all raring to go take down as many gyms on campus as you can tonight. Maybe you will be able to just hang back and relax tonight after all.

The new girl seems to have appointed herself the leader of this little expedition and quickly climbs the bricks of the clocktower to put herself above the rest of you.

“Friends, classmates, lend me your ears. Tonight, we take back the Instinct reputation. Tonight, we show those Valor upstarts who rules the campus. Tonight, we follow our Instincts!” You think, briefly, that it’s in fact your team who are the upstarts, what with how long Valor has held most of the gyms on campus, but she seems to have the undergraduates at least enraptured. More than one fist is raised into the air even before she finishes, and the volume of the cry that erupts is enough that you think that if anyone on campus had somehow avoided the rumor that Instinct was striking back, they can’t have missed it now.

With a startlingly sincere shout of, “CHARGE!” the crowd leaps forward, you with it, more carried along with the current than any actual intent.

The first stop is the actual gym, one of the oldest Valor holdouts by sole fact that Instinct got most of their workout by running around and Mystic tended to stick to the library. The bored undergrad behind the desk on the night shift barely looks up as you all swarm forward, only offering a half-hearted, “ID, please” before turning back to their IV/EV stats textbook.

Your leader for the night was right: the combination of the gym being a long-time holdout and the hour means that the only Valor students holding the gym are first year undergraduates who look held together solely by energy drinks and lemonades and who are easy to topple. You leave behind some third year undergrads of your own to hold down the fort and move onward.

The statue behind the dorms is next, even more depressingly staffed by only one Valor student, who looks almost relieved to be able to go back to his own room and sleep for the night.

As the night goes on, your numbers slowly dwindle as more and more Instinct students get left at posts at gyms, as the whole campus steadily turns from overwhelmingly red to a wash of yellow.

Finally, you find yourself climbing the old, rickety stairs in the library, the ones that only the ghost trainers tend to hang out at. She swears there’s a mural at the top that is a gym, and you find yourself trusting this girl who has seemed so new but at least seems to have done her research. She’ll go far, you think. Maybe even graduate on time, if she doesn’t lose her spark.

There are only a few of you left, enough left behind that you barely make any sound on the metal stairs winding up to the top of the tower. You’ll want to remember this place, you think. Ghost pokemon eggs are hard to come by and harder to raise, so a nest of Ghastlys would be a big help in your research. Too bad there doesn’t seem to be enough time to try and catch one, not with the way you’re being herded up the stairs.

At the top you find three Valor trainers accompanied by none other than a couple Gengars and a Snorlax so large that you seriously wonder why the rotting floor beneath it is still holding. They’re as surprised to see you as the rest of the gyms have been tonight, and you think that the new girl was really on to something. It’ll be impossible to hold all of these, but for tonight, for this one shining night, like she said, Instinct rules the campus.

You’d been hanging back at the gyms, letting the younger trainers battle it out and letting them stay behind and hold down their newly gained territory. It was partly laziness and partly wanting to see how far you’d all take this train, but as you start to really throw yourself into the battle here, you’re glad you did. It’s all older students: the new girl is the youngest, and you’d have been fairly sure the other graduate students, like you, had lost the sense of thrill of battle. But here you all are, calling out attacks and dodging alongside your Pokemon like you’re still fresh-faced first years.

Too soon, it’s over; you find yourself stroking your Alakazam reassuringly. She’d done well, a well-timed Future Sight taking down the leader’s Gengar and sealing the deal. You’d done it, Instinct had taken over the campus and you definitely weren’t getting any sleep tonight.

You can see the sunrise start over the horizon as your ragtag team leans on the library tower balcony and you let out the rest of your Pokemon to watch the sight with you. Bloom leans against your leg affectionately, and you fluff up his hydrangea, slightly squished on the left side where he’d taken a Tackle from a Tangela back on the humanities quad.

You turn towards the new girl and thank her. She puffs out her chest and raises her Pikachu to sit on her head. You can tell by the way that it’s sitting more upright and forward that it’ll evolve into a Raichu soon, something you definitely wouldn’t have known even your first year as an Instinct graduate student, and it makes you think back on all you’ve learned in your years here. It’s been a lot of research that you didn’t think would actually go anywhere, but as your Electabuzz raises his arms to the sunrise, you think that you’ve had a lot of good times, too, running around and exploring.

You’re startled out of your reminiscing by a shout of surprise and you find the girl digging around in an alcove only to suddenly come back out holding an egg. It’s a large egg, a pearlescent sheen to its shell that you’ve never seen before.

“You should have it,” she says as she tries to hand you the egg. You argue that this was all her idea and that you’d never even be up here if not for her, but she simply pushes it further into your chest.

“No, you should take it. You’re the one with the most seniority, it should go towards your research.”

The egg is warm when she hands it over, and it suffuses you with a golden warmth not unlike the feeling you had watching the sun break over you and your Pokemon. You thank her and cradle it close to your chest before packing it away in your bag, always stocked with incubators and extra blankets to secure any eggs you find. Spark has trained you well, you think.

This’ll make a good final paper.

  
Eggs of legendaries can often be distinguished by their thin shell and metallic sheen #eggfacts


End file.
